THRILLING PICTURE.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 600, 2 November 1932, Page 3

THRILLING PICTURE.

Boris Karloff Appears in “ The Old Dark House.”

“What Price Hollywood?” Constance Bennett’s latest starring picture, will conclude its season at the Regent Theatre on Friday night. A brilliant and almost exclusively British cast appears in Universal’s “ The Old Dark House,” starring Boris Karloff, the thrilling production which will head the new programme at the Regent Theatre on Saturday. Melvyn Douglas, Ernest Thesiger, Eva Moore, Charles Laughton, Lilian Bond and John Dudgeon are a few of the British players who, by their work in this comedy-mystery-drama, make it a film far above the usual run of pictures of this type. “The Old Dark House,” hailed everywhere as a masterpiece of frenzied excitement and gripping suspense, was produced by the makers of the greatest thrill-producing pictures ever filmed, “ Phantom of the Opera ” and “ Dracula.”

Based on the strange story by the celebrated English author. J. B. Priest-

ley, this unusual picture tells the story of storm driven travellers who seek a night’s lodging in a bleak, forbidding o 1 d house in the lonely Welsh mountains, only to discover that its inhabitants are dangerously insane and under the spell of a malignant giant servant. As the storm increases, so does the evil brute’s ferocity, and a series

of terrifying events occur which give this picture an absolutely unequalled dramatic pupch—especially when a murder-mad maniac is let loose. Boris Karloff, in the role o? the hulking giant, is easily twice as terrifying as anything previously seen on the screen, and his sensational make-up is something to marvel at. Melvyn Douglas and Lilian Bond are delightfully romantic through it all, and the greatest group of character actors ever assembled for one picture make the strange figures of the novel live on the screen. Box plans at The Bristol.